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1
A pioneering book proposing a transhumanist vision of the future, from one of the most influential visionary scientists of the twentieth century. more A pioneering book proposing a transhumanist vision of the future, from one of the most influential visionary scientists of the twentieth century. less 
Sebastian SeungJD Bernal was an Irish crystallographer who wrote this book in 1929. He was contemporaries with people like Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World at around the same time. Clearly biology had progressed to a point where people were thinking about the future of human society, and how it could be affected by biology and biotechnology. Bernal wrote this book to talk about human history. (Source)
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2
Portraits of the Mind follows the fascinating history of our exploration of the brain through images, from medieval sketches and 19th-century drawings by the founder of modern neuroscience to images produced using state-of-the-art techniques, allowing us to see the fantastic networks in the brain as never before. These black-and-white and vibrantly colored images, many resembling abstract art, are employed daily by scientists around the world, but most have never before been seen by the general public. Each chapter addresses a different set of techniques for studying the brain as... more Portraits of the Mind follows the fascinating history of our exploration of the brain through images, from medieval sketches and 19th-century drawings by the founder of modern neuroscience to images produced using state-of-the-art techniques, allowing us to see the fantastic networks in the brain as never before. These black-and-white and vibrantly colored images, many resembling abstract art, are employed daily by scientists around the world, but most have never before been seen by the general public. Each chapter addresses a different set of techniques for studying the brain as revealed through the images, and each is introduced by a leading scientist in that field of study. Author Carl Schoonover’s captions provide detailed explanations of each image as well as the major insights gained by scientists over the course of the past 20 years. Accessible to a wide audience, this book reveals the elegant methods applied to study the mind, giving readers a peek at its innermost workings, helping us to understand them, and offering clues about what may lie ahead.
Praise for Portraits of the Mind:
"An odyssey through the brain, illuminated by a rainbow"
--New York Times
"Stunning images"
--Scientific American
"The collection of images in the new book Portraits of the Mind is truly impressive . . . The mix of history, science and art is terrific."
-Wired.com
"History, science, and art come together to provide a unique perspective on what's going on upstairs."
--New Yorker.com
"No knowledge of the source or subject matter of these images is necessary; the book is justified by their beauty alone."
--Science
"A remarkable new book"
- -Discover.com
"John Keats's insistence that truth is beauty is exemplified by Carl Schoonover's wonderful book Portraits of the Mind. Since one cannot understand the present without examining the past, this book offers a delightful and instructive way of accomplishing just that. I enthusiastically recommend this beautiful book both to students of brain science and to lovers of art."
-Eric R. Kandel, MD, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2000; University Professor at Columbia; Fred Kavli Professor and Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science; Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and author of In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
"Portraits of the Mind achieves a rare combination of beauty and knowledge. Its images of the brain are mesmerizing, from medieval engravings to modern visualizations as gorgeously abstract as anything by Rothko or de Kooning. And in explaining the nature of these images, this book also delivers an enlightening, up-to-date history of neuroscience."
-Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How It Changed the World and The Mind's Eye Goes Blind: Fifteen Journeys Through the Brain
"Portraits of the Mind is a remarkable book that combines beautifully reproduced illustrations of the nervous system as it has been visualized over the centuries, as well as lively and authoritative commentaries by some of today's leading neuroscientists. It will be enjoyed by professionals and general readers alike."
--Dale Purves, MD, Professor of Neurobiology, Psychology and Neuroscience; and Philosophy at Duke University
less Sebastian SeungThis is a picture storybook about the brain, which sounds really mad. It is such an engaging book because the brain is so fascinating – but people are quite often scared to think about it. (Source)
Tanya ByronIf you want to see the images of the brain which have been so important for science, Portraits of the Mind is a wonderful resource. (Source)
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3
Our minds are working all the time, but we rarely stop to think about how they work. The human mind has many different ways to think, says Marvin Minsky, the leading figure in artificial intelligence and computer science. We use these different ways of thinking in different circumstances, and some of them we don't even associate with thinking. For example, emotions, intuitions, and feelings are just other forms of thinking, according to Minsky. In his groundbreaking new work, "The Emotion Machine," Minsky shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change... more Our minds are working all the time, but we rarely stop to think about how they work. The human mind has many different ways to think, says Marvin Minsky, the leading figure in artificial intelligence and computer science. We use these different ways of thinking in different circumstances, and some of them we don't even associate with thinking. For example, emotions, intuitions, and feelings are just other forms of thinking, according to Minsky. In his groundbreaking new work, "The Emotion Machine," Minsky shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change in the future."The Emotion Machine" explains how our minds work, how they progress from simple kinds of thought to more complex forms that enable us to reflect on ourselves -- what most people refer to as consciousness, or self-awareness. Unlike other broad theories of the mind, this book proceeds in a step-by-step fashion that draws on detailed and specific examples. It shows that thinking -- even higher-level thinking -- can be broken down into a series of specific actions. From emotional states to goals and attachments and on to consciousness and awareness of self, we can understand the process of thinking in all its intricacy. And once we understand thinking, we can build machines -- artificial intelligences -- that can assist with our thinking, machines that can follow the same thinking patterns that we follow and that can think as we do. These humanlike thinking machines would also be emotion machines -- just as we are.
This is a brilliant book that challenges many ideas about thinking and the mind. It is as insightful and provocative as it is original, the fruit of a lifetime spentthinking about thinking. less Sebastian SeungMarvin Minsky is famous as one of the fathers of artificial intelligence. The Emotion Machine is a summation of his lifetime of thinking about how the brain works. It is written somewhat as a computer scientist but also as a philosopher and psychologist. He’s a brilliant thinker and a brilliant writer. Most people will not know that he actually started out as a neuroscientist. But he gave up on... (Source)
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4
Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation - one of the most unique road trips in modern literature.
Albert Einstein's brain floats in formaldehyde in a Tupperware® bowl in a gray duffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling across America. Driving the car is Michael Paterniti, a young journalist from Maine. Sitting next to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named Thomas Harvey who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955--and simply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for over forty years.
On a cold... more Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation - one of the most unique road trips in modern literature.
Albert Einstein's brain floats in formaldehyde in a Tupperware® bowl in a gray duffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling across America. Driving the car is Michael Paterniti, a young journalist from Maine. Sitting next to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named Thomas Harvey who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955--and simply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for over forty years.
On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave New Jersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein's perplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as the imaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-driven genius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars.
Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature. With the brain as both cargo and talisman, Paterniti perceives every motel, truck-stop diner, and roadside attraction as a weigh station for the American dream in the wake of the scientist's mind-blowing legacy. Finally, inspired by the man who gave a skeptical world a glimpse of its cosmic origins, this extraordinary writer weaves his own unified field theory of time, love, and the power to believe, once again, in eternity. less Sebastian SeungThis is a fun book by a journalist, describing his adventures driving across America with pieces of Einstein’s brain in the trunk of his car. Einstein’s brain was stolen after he died by Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy and then absconded with the brain. There is a long tradition of studying the brains of geniuses, especially in the 19th century. Of course it was natural,... (Source)
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5
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and... more This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. less Sebastian SeungThis is an obscure reference that most neuroscientists or philosophers will not be familiar with. But it is historically a very important book because Bain is probably the first connectionist. By that I mean the doctrine of connectionism that you have been alluding to, which is that the connections of the brain are extremely important for its functioning. As far as I can tell, he was the first... (Source)
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